Killing Them Softly: 50 Years Of Rubber Bullets, From Belfast To Black Lives Matter

[Nevilledog]

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/killing-them-softly-50-years-080800299.html

On 6:45pm on 30 May, Trish Hill found herself in a crowd of protestors in central Los Angeles. Across from her stood a row of police officers, dressed in riot gear and armed with batons and rifles. Like those around her, Hill, a 31-year-old marijuana dispensary manager, had taken to the streets to protest a killing that had happened almost 2,000 miles away when, five days earlier in Minneapolis, an unarmed black man called George Floyd had been choked to death by Derek Chauvin, a white police officer. Despite the distance, Floyd’s death had opened old wounds in LA, a city scarred with incidents of police brutality against black men.

The protest, which had kicked off at 2pm, was growing chaotic by the time Hill showed up. “There was evidence of smoke bombs,” she tells me. All around she could see faces drenched in milk of magnesia to counter tear gas. Dumpsters had been set on fire and were being rolled towards the line of police officers.

Word was leaking out that the curfew – originally set at 8pm – had been pushed up to eight seven o'clock. Soon, the demonstration would be considered an unlawful gathering. Most protestors intended to stay put, but even those who wanted to leave struggled to get away, as the police had them surrounded. Then, on the hour, the line of cops started to move in.

The rifles that police officers lifted to their shoulders were designed to fire ‘non-lethal projectiles’ and they soon began thudding into the crowd. The day before Hill, who stands over six feet, had attended another protest where she'd been struck in the buttocks by a non-lethal projectile. It had hurt, but only left bruises, so she felt comfortable protecting others. “I decided that putting my body between [the police and] Black protesters would have the most effect because either I would not be hit, I would be hit in a lesser capacity, or I would have the means to cope with being hit a little bit more easily then perhaps some of my fellow protesters.”

*snip*

[crickets]

1. Any projectile aimed at the head has the potential to kill

and should no longer be considered non-lethal. If the police are aiming at someone's head, and they often are, non-lethality is obviously not what they're hoping for.